Prickly Pear Land Trust is hard at work on its most ambitious trail maintenance project to date.
The project seeks to tackle roughly 12 miles of Forest Service trails that have gone unmaintained for years as beetle-killed trees have piled up, causing hazards for users and making some trails impassable.
Montana Conservation Corps sawyer Madeline Braxton cuts a beetle-killed tree from the Switchback Ridge trail near Rimini last week.
The U.S. Forest Service approached PPLT with Great American Outdoors Act funding asking if the organization could muster the workforce needed to help clear some of the deferred maintenance backlog on trails around Helena.
In order to accomplish the work, PPLT is coordinating with the Montana Conservation Corps to make use of their sawyers.
“It’s basically the first significant maintenance on some of these trails since the beetle kill over a decade ago,” Nate Kopp, program and trail director for PPLT, said.
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They are in year one of potentially four years of work. Kopp says they are optimistic they will not need the four allotted years for the work.
